MURDERED: Jessica Starr

Every mystery has an answer, but some have way more than one possibility.

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Hi, crime junkies.

I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.

And today, Britt and I are going to divide and conquer because two Indiana cases recently came across my desk that are both pretty recent and both in need of some eyes and ears.

So you get two episodes in your feed today, one from me and then one from Britt.

And if you follow me on social, you'll know I was recently back near my hometown, scoping out an area in Elkhart, Indiana, that was once a crime scene because I just needed to see it for myself.

How did someone lay in wait, blitz attack a young woman, then drag her to the side of her trailer and cut her from ear to ear without a single witness seeing?

It didn't seem possible.

And how have police not tracked down her killer after 14 years?

Well, being at the scene and doing some digging of our own has made it pretty clear that the police bungled the investigation.

And it might be up to all of us now to help the family get justice.

And we might be close because our digging led to someone who said that they know what happened.

And based on who they're connected to, they could be telling the truth.

This is the story of Jessica Starr.

911, where's your emergency?

Um, it's in Okhart, Indiana, uh, in Melody Lake.

I was sitting on the couch and uh

one of my mom's friends was getting home from work, one of her roommates, and I heard her run up the deck and

was screaming and then she

sounded like she got like her a handcuffed over her mouth and she stopped all the way, saying, we need somebody to get to be segregated and led away.

That was part of a call that an 11-year-old named Jeff made to dispatchers just after 11.30 p.m.

on August 8th, 2011, from inside his trailer.

He'd been home with his mom and little brother, expecting his mom's roommate and coworker, Jessica Starr, to be coming home any minute, like...

any other normal night.

But he's pretty sure that he just heard her getting attacked in front of their home.

And now, having called the police, he is staring out the open front door into the pitch black night, watching his mom call for Jessica from the front porch with her gun in hand, afraid that someone might still be out there.

But it is now completely silent.

They can see Jessica's two-door Pontiac parked close to their front porch in front of the house.

But the driver's side door is wide open.

Just then, Jeff and his mom, Terry, heard this rustling sound at the side of the house, almost like someone was running off.

But her children's safety was her first priority.

Terry stays on the porch, gun in hand, waiting for police to arrive.

And thank God, it's not long.

Police cars pull down the dark road, and as soon as their cars are in park, cops are scouring the property.

And it's when they walk to the side of the house, the side where Jeff and Terry heard that rustling, that's when they find Jessica.

And it's bad.

She's got bruises on her arms, her throat has been cut, and she'd been stabbed.

So by the time they get to her, it's too late.

She's already gone.

Police are baffled by the brazen attack.

And the fact that there were witnesses, I mean, in the house that she was headed towards, makes it all the more confounding, but also promising for the now homicide investigation.

So police go to Jeff, like tell us everything you saw and heard.

He told us recently what he shared with them 14 years ago.

He said that he was laying in the living room with his brother waiting for Jessica to get home.

He's on his Game Boy when he hears this noise by the front door.

Now, all these years later, he says he can't exactly remember what that noise was,

but he got up and looked out this little window at the top of the front door, except he couldn't see anything.

It was like completely dark.

Now, at the time, it didn't occur to him that it shouldn't have been pitch black because his mom always left the porch light on.

But young boy oblivious to that kind of detail, he just went back to lie down and kept playing his game.

Except that didn't last long.

Soon after, he started hearing screaming and not just any screaming.

I mean, this was primal, guttural screaming coming from somewhere in the front yard.

At first, he thought it might be some sort of animal, like cats fighting, before he had that chilling realization that it was Jessica.

And whatever happened next happened very quickly, like within minutes.

Jeff says that it sounded to him like Jessica made it to the front porch, but someone put their hand over her mouth to muffle her screams and dragged her away.

Once the screaming stopped, Jeff says that he was almost in shock for like a couple of seconds, but when he snapped out of it, he snuck to his mom's room to tell her what was happening.

Now, she's sound asleep at the time, and from there, the loud fan that she kept running likely was drowning out all the noise.

But any parent knows that a panicked shake from your child will jolt you right awake.

So that's when she told Jeff to bring her her gun and call police.

Based on Jeff's story and what police see in front of them, Jessica's immediate family believe that police built out this theory.

Jessica's car is parked to the right of the house, door ajar, and police see that there are groceries in the back seat.

So it looks like Jessica got home and parked and maybe was about to take the groceries out when she's attacked.

I mean, there's even fresh mud that's kicked up on the side of that open door.

So it looks like there was a struggle.

But what they don't see there is any blood.

The cut that Jessica suffered to her throat would have been super bloody.

So that obviously didn't happen at the car, which means that they likely would have had to incapacitate her in some other way, either just by overpowering her and grabbing her or with a weapon.

And they actually think it's probably option B because of the extensive bruising that she had to her arms.

And laying in the yard close to her body, they actually find a baseball bat size branch.

And all of this had to have been premeditated.

The branch likely came from a brush pile at the back of the trailer.

So a weapon was picked beforehand.

Not to mention the killer obviously had a knife on them, which they did not leave behind like this branch.

And then just off to the right, if you're looking at the trailer straight on, they see an area where some of the grass is like stamped down, like someone was almost like crouching there for a while.

But from the street, Jessica probably wouldn't have been able to see someone waiting for her if they were tucked into the brush enough.

And then finally, there's that sound that Jeff first heard.

It turns out the reason the porch was so dark when Jeff looked out the window that first time was because the porch light bulb was missing.

Now, Terry was sure that the light had been on when she went to bed that night.

So likely the first sound that Jeff heard was either someone tall enough unscrewing the bulb and like just being loud about it, or someone shorter, maybe with the help of something or someone like being hoisted up to remove it.

So whoever this is, they got their weapons, they made sure it was dark, and then they laid in wait for Jessica.

They blitz attacked her at her car.

And from Jeff's account, it sounds like she tried to run up to the front door and she screamed for help, but they got a hold of her and dragged her off the porch to the side of the house where they swiftly and thoughtlessly slaughtered her.

And then they took off into the night with just the knife and the porch's light bulb.

They left everything else, including Jessica's purse, which leads me and Jessica's family to believe that this wasn't a random robbery.

Jessica was targeted.

They knew her routine, when she'd be coming home, where she would park when she did.

This was about killing her.

So it was now going to be about finding who would have motive for that.

Except, if physical evidence was the way to do that, police dropped the ball right from the beginning.

Jessica's family told us that when they showed up outside the trailer the very next evening for a candlelight vigil, Jessica's car was still just sitting there.

Police hadn't taken it, they hadn't moved it, hadn't even taped it off.

In fact, most of the scene isn't taped off.

So of course, as people are grieving, they're like putting their candles on her car.

They're walking all over the yard.

And I mean, to no fault of their own, like by the way, because how would they know not to go anywhere or touch anything if the police in charge don't tell you not to?

It's not a citizen's job to collect and preserve evidence.

They're trusting the police to do that.

Now, did they do that at all?

Did they process anything the first night?

Maybe.

I can't tell you because the police wouldn't talk to us for this episode and they denied our FOIA request as well.

But in talking to Jessica's family, they have their doubts whether the car was even fingerprinted.

Because I mean, you would usually tow the car if it's part of an investigation, but her family told us that they never even moved the car from where Jessica parked it.

And when her family got it back a few days after her death, they told us that they didn't see any fingerprint dust or any evidence that they had done any real processing of the vehicle.

But that's just the start of their many complaints about how Elkhart County Sheriff's Office seemed to just not care about finding Jessica's killer.

From their perspective, it seems like police just leave a bunch of potential evidence behind.

like blood on the ground where Jessica was found or possible footprints by her car where that mud was kicked up.

Jessica's family even mentioned a handprint on the top top of the car, although they clarified that they aren't sure if it was from the attack or if it was there before, but worth checking, I think.

Jessica's dad also doesn't think that they asked neighbors for any camera footage or from the grocery store that she was working at before she went home.

I mean, it's basic stuff that just doesn't seem like it was done.

And even though we couldn't get the files, you might think, oh, well, Ashley, you guys talked to the family.

Surely the police at least told them what was or wasn't done.

Nope.

According to Jessica's family, police weren't keeping the family updated.

So they're assuming the worst.

Now, I grew up right around here.

Elkhart is kind of a small town.

People talk.

What's real?

What's rumors?

You never really know.

But Jeff told our reporter that he thinks he remembers hearing something about police getting DNA from under Jessica's fingernails, which makes sense because after her autopsy, they said her arm arm was broken.

And that combined with the bruising makes me think that she fought like hell.

But if they did get something, they have never spoken out publicly and said that.

So is there a DNA profile?

Was it good enough for COTIS?

Was it ever compared to anyone?

Specifically, was it ever compared to Jessica's ex?

Because immediately, that is who her family became suspicious of.

32-year-old Tavares Browning, who everyone calls Bae.

Bae was actually the reason Jessica was living with Terry in the first place.

They had dated for a few years.

They had been living together, but they broke up a couple of months before this in April.

And then Terry offered Jessica a place to stay while she like got back on her feet.

Now, everyone has something to say about Bae, specifically about how tumultuous their relationship was.

I mean, her family and friends told us that they never saw or heard of any physical abuse from him towards Jessica, but he was allegedly a verbal and emotional abuser.

And according to Jessica's friends, after he and Jessica broke up, he started stalking her.

He even showed up at her work.

Now, her coworkers were aware and they didn't let her leave or walk to her car without someone else with her.

One of her friends told us that there had been talk of a restraining order at some point, but she doesn't think Jessica actually got one.

And I think that's correct because we couldn't find record of one with local courts.

Now, Bay is a drug dealer with a history of battery charges, although those battery charges were from years before he and Jessica even dated.

And he was only ever convicted of two of those charges, one in 1998 and one in 1999.

But the timing of what happened to Jessica stands out to me.

I mean, not only is leaving an abusive relationship one of the most dangerous times for a victim, but also, Jessica just started seeing someone new.

So maybe that's motive.

But here's the thing.

According to Jessica's family, police told them that they went to Bae's home the night that Jessica was killed because, I mean, that's how quick they were hearing about him.

And when they arrived, he was in bed with another woman and looked like he had just woken up.

Based on Jessica's brother's recollection, he thinks that detectives assumed he wouldn't have been able to get back to wherever he was staying and clean up and stuff before police got there that night.

Although, honestly, I'm a little skeptical about this.

I'm not sure exactly how long it was between when the murder took place and when police turned up at Bay's door.

But police likely have the details that we are lacking.

And based on what they have and know, they quickly rule him out.

And maybe the other thing that they have is DNA.

And maybe they know that the profile they have isn't a match to him.

To me, that would be worth saying publicly, but they haven't, so I'm not making any assumptions.

They very well could have just ruled him out based on him being home.

There's also a world where he's involved directly or indirectly, but didn't actually do it.

Jessica's family laid out a couple of scenarios for me.

Their thinking is that if it wasn't Bae, he may have orchestrated it, or someone may have killed Jessica in order to hurt him.

Despite being a small-time drug dealer, Jessica's family told us that he had this way of luring people into his web and manipulating those around him.

So maybe he ticked someone off or got on someone's bad side enough to where they killed Jessica to get back at him.

I mean, he was clearly still attached to Jessica in some way, and maybe someone else knew that.

Now, to his credit, the one thing Jessica's family does say is that he was absolutely distraught when she died.

So if he was involved, it actually makes way more sense to them that this was someone else who carried it out.

And really, that's even more based on what they know about the attack.

They don't think that Bae would have needed a tree branch to take Jessica down.

I mean, he's pretty tall and she's on the shorter side, so they think his bare hands would have been enough.

You use the tree branch if you need help overpowering her.

Say, if you were smaller, physically weaker, maybe a woman around Jessica's same size, which makes something a neighbor kid heard the night of Jessica's murder all the more interesting.

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When police interviewed neighbors, one 17-year-old kid in the home across the street, did remember hearing something that night.

He claims he heard screaming and then after he heard a woman's voice saying, well, we got to get out of here.

Now, in the moment, his brain was trying to put what he was hearing into context of his normal life.

So he thought that may have been someone calling for their dog, but he didn't see anything.

Now, this is super interesting because there is a group of women in Jessica's orbit who her family learned about within a few months after her death.

You see, Jessica actually had two jobs when she was killed.

The first was at a grocery store and the second was at a local factory.

And Jessica's dad hears that some of the women she worked with at the factory ran in the same circles as Bae.

Now, they weren't happy that she'd broken up with him.

Allegedly, they told her that she needed to go back to her man and it wasn't right that she'd left him.

Now, the thing is, I don't know if police ever looked into this group of women.

despite Jessica's family reporting all of this to them.

It's one of the questions I wanted to ask them most if they would have agreed to talk to us.

But if they didn't look into this, it's probably because they directed their attention to more obvious suspects, like this guy named Josh.

And listen, it's for good reason that they looked at him early on.

Even if the incident that makes him so suspicious happened nearly a decade ago, it is still horrific.

So according to Jessica's brother and sister-in-law, this guy, Josh, went to high school with Jessica back in 2001 when she was 18, and he was really into her, but she wasn't in to him, which apparently pissed him off.

So one morning before school, he came to her house, grabbed a tire iron out of her garage, and beat her with it while also allegedly attempting to sexually assault her.

Now, he got caught that very day because dude literally went to school with her blood still on his hoodie.

And he served almost three years for that.

But as unhinged as this man is, police end up finding out that he was in Michigan at the time that Jessica was killed.

So they rule him off the list too.

But the list of potential suspects keeps growing the more they learn about Jessica.

Not because she was into anything bad, quite the opposite, actually.

She took every bad thing that happened to her and used it as a drive to do good.

Her family told us that she had worked as a legal assistant in the prosecutor's office shortly before her murder, and she sometimes stepped in as a liaison for victims of domestic violence, which can be a dangerous position.

So, I mean, I kind of wondered, like, oh, what if she got involved in a case where someone else's abusive partner would want to retaliate against her?

So I had our team reach out to the former prosecutor who Jessica worked under, but unfortunately, he doesn't remember any cases that she would have helped out with where that could have been a concern.

I mean, he's familiar with Jessica's case, obviously, and in his opinion, that's not a likely scenario.

He said, based on what he knows, he thinks it likely would have been someone close to Jessica.

And so we're right back to where we started.

Over the years, without anywhere to place blame, people just go looking for it.

And many times it's fallen on Terry.

I mean, some of Jessica's friends can't help but wonder if Terry could know more than she's saying.

They also don't like that Terry didn't go looking for Jessica when she went out onto the porch with her gun.

But let me stop you right there.

Like, first of all, fight, flight, freeze.

You don't know till you're in it.

I mean, the fact that she's even on the porch with her gun to me is a lot.

And she is a mom with two little kids in the house.

I don't blame her for not wanting to leave the doorway open when there is a mystery assailant outside.

And those are the same feelings that Jessica's family shares.

They understand how Jessica's friends might find that suspicious, but they don't think that Terry had anything to do with this.

And Terry herself also denies knowing more than she's let on.

But speaking of Terry, she actually has her own theories.

And she gave me something that I was desperate for, the name of a woman, because I can't get over that female voice saying, we ought to get out of here.

She says that briefly, while Jessica was living with her, they had another roommate, Anna.

She was only there a hot second because Terry had to kick her out because she wasn't following house rules, doing things like inviting a guy over without permission.

And according to Terry, Anna blamed Jessica for her getting kicked out.

And I'm not sure why.

Maybe Jessica was the one who told Terry that this stuff was happening, or maybe she was just feeling replaced, or maybe Jessica was just a great example of following the rules and made a glaring example of what a bad roommate she was.

Who knows?

But Terry told our team that she's suspicious of Anna because of one really specific reason.

Anna would have known that Terry slept with that industrial size fan to block out noise, which would have prevented her from hearing anything.

Now, we asked Jessica's family what they thought of Terry's theory, but they don't really buy it.

Still, our team connected with Anna just to get her take.

And not only does she deny having anything to do with Jessica's death, She actually gave us a whole new story that sent me spiraling.

Anna told us us that this guy she was dating, who by the way, also ran in the same circles as Bae, this guy assaulted her sometime after Jessica's homicide.

And during this assault, he threatened her with a knife and allegedly said, quote, do you want to end up like Jess?

Now, I had all the questions after learning this, like, did he just say this because he knew what happened to Jessica?

Like, specifically how she died?

I mean, her cause of death isn't a secret, so it's very likely that he knew she was killed with with a knife.

Or did he maybe know more than he was letting on?

Did he have more insight into what happened?

Now, we've tried to confirm any part of this with other people.

And in doing so, we talked to some of Jessica's friends, but they couldn't corroborate this threat.

To me, it would still be worth looking into, as are the women at the factory.

Especially when it seems like police don't have anything else.

The people in Elkart are still talking about Jessica's homicide to this day, and her friends and family are keeping their ears to the ground for any chatter, turning over any rumors that they hear to police, because like any good crime junkie knows, people don't keep secrets forever.

And actually, the most recent tip that they turned over was just from like a year and a half ago.

That's when one of Jessica's loved ones had a run-in with this woman who also happens to run in the same circles as Bae.

And she was going around claiming that she knew who did it.

So again, all the questions, does she actually know more?

Is she just saying that to get attention or to make people mad?

We've been trying to get in touch with this woman to follow up on these claims.

And I know all of this has been reported to the police, but no one knows if they've done anything with this.

So many rumors still seem to revolve around Bay, but police have never connected him to this.

Bay is currently serving a pretty hefty sentence for dealing cocaine.

And we reached out to Bay for a comment, and he denies having anything to do with Jessica's death.

He also denies stalking and verbally or emotionally abusing her.

Jessica's family worries that they're never going to be able to tie anyone to the crime because of how royally they think Elkhart County Sheriff's Office screwed up the investigation from the start.

They even say that police ghost them when they ask for updates, which I am sure feels terrible when all you want is answers.

Without Elkhart County Sheriff's Office communicating with them, Jessica's family is still waiting for justice.

Her brother said that whoever did this didn't just kill Jessica, they killed the whole family.

I mean, Jessica's mother died just a month after her from health complications compounded by grief, and her father spent the rest of his life searching for answers.

I mean, he died just earlier this year.

Her brother told us that their dad filled notebooks upon notebooks of theories about who could have killed his daughter and notes on his own investigation.

Unfortunately, he'd like isolated himself after her death, so he didn't share much.

And even when they got his books after he died, they were like in pretty bad shape and nothing really useful came from them.

Listen, her family wants Jessica to be remembered as the type of person who used the bad things that happened to her for good.

Like how she helped victims of domestic violence at work.

She would tell people that they could survive what was happening to them because she had.

She even kept a photo of her 18-year-old self in her desk to show people what they would come back from.

And she would have wanted her death to be used for good too.

Her family honored her that way by organizing a donation drive for a local women's shelter that she'd helped with as a part of her work at the prosecutor's office.

They ended up filling like three to four semi-truck trailers full of donations in her honor.

And we at AudioChuck have made a donation to that same women's shelter.

It's called Safe Haven, Elkhart County.

We're going to link to that in the show notes if you want to join us.

Jessica's killer could still be out there and someone knows something.

If you have any information about the death of Jessica Starr, you can submit tips to us at tips at audiochuck.com.

You can also contact the Elkart County Sheriff's Office, and we're going to have their contact information in our show notes.

You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkie.com.

And if you want to listen to this episode and all of our episodes completely ad-free, be sure to join our fan club.

You'll also get early access to new episodes every week.

You can follow us on Instagram at CrimeJunkie Podcast, and we will be back next week with a brand new episode.

Crime Junkie is an audio chuck production.

I think Chuck would approve.

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The guy thought he had a good thing going, a good job, and two lovers.

That is, until this triangle got complicated and somebody had to go.

I'm Josh Mankowitz, and this is Deadly Engagement, an all-new podcast from Dateline.

It's a story that's sure to keep you guessing as lovers turn on each other in a desperate bid to avoid prison.

Listen now.